China's artificial intelligence diagnostic malaria parasite system was officially launched

Today (30th), the artificial intelligence diagnosis malaria parasite system developed by the researchers of the Academy of Military Medicine of the Academy of Military Sciences was officially launched in Beijing, which can help the world, especially Africa, control malaria, while consolidating the achievements of malaria elimination in China, which marks a major breakthrough in the construction of the malaria parasite prevention and control system worldwide.

After visiting a laboratory of the Military Medical Research Institute, the CCTV reporter Su Zhou saw that the researchers of the Military Medical Research Institute could quickly and conveniently identify the presence of malaria parasites in the samples collected through the artificial intelligence diagnosis parasite system newly developed by them during their assistance in Africa, thus replacing the laboratory test as a referee and enabling malaria patients to get timely diagnosis.

This artificial intelligence diagnostic parasite system consists of four parts: image acquisition module, cell detection module, malaria classification module and malaria diagnosis module, and the use of smart phones to take pictures can be carried out on-site or remote detection of blood smears in real time. The system is a low-cost, efficient and accurate malaria parasite diagnostics programme that helps people in malaria-prone areas such as Africa to improve malaria detection capacity and diagnostic levels and minimize manual operations, thereby reducing the intensity of the work of testers and improving the efficiency of testing.

Teng Yue, an associate researcher in the Unknown Pathogen Analysis Department of the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Military Medical Research Institute, said that by taking a microscopic image of a blood smear through a smartphone, and then entering the obtained photos into our artificial intelligence detection system, it takes less than a minute to determine whether the sample is infected with malaria. Since last year, the system has been piloted in some hospitals in Africa, and the results are very good, which is a great help for the local people in Africa.

It is understood that in the process of human history, malaria is one of the most dangerous infectious diseases, and the climate and sanitary conditions in Africa have created conditions for the spread of malaria. Once a patient is infected with malaria, the disease progresses rapidly and there is a possibility of developing severe malaria, which is life-threatening. It can be seen that early diagnosis of malaria is essential to reduce the spread of malaria parasites and to reduce mortality. However, some countries in Africa are constrained by the level of clinical laboratory testers, hindering the widespread use of malaria microscopy.

Song Yajun, director of the Unknown Pathogen Analysis Office of the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Military Medical Research Institute, said that although malaria has been successfully eradicated in our country, it is still widely present in the world, especially in Africa and other regions, with the advancement of technology, artificial intelligence technology has been able to show a level comparable to that of human experts in the field of medical image recognition, then the biggest advantage of our system is that the use of artificial intelligence reduces the complexity of malaria parasite detection, easy to promote, we also hope that the system, Provide Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions for the fight against malaria in Africa and the world.

【News Link】Military Medical Research Institute: The sharp blade of the knife fighting in the front line of antimalarial

A few days ago, the World Health Organization issued a communiqué, and China officially obtained the WHO malaria elimination certification. This is another major infectious disease eliminated in China after smallpox, polio, filariasis and neonatal tetanus. Generations of researchers from the Military Medical Research Institute have developed malaria prevention and control drugs such as compound artemether from emergency imitation to independent innovation, which has played an important leading role in the global roll back malaria action.

Malaria is caused by the proliferation of plasmodiums within human red blood cells and is transmitted mainly through the bite of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. In the 1940s, the number of malaria cases in China was about 30 million per year, and the number of deaths was about 300,000. Researchers at the Military Medical Research Institute proposed that the prevention and treatment of malaria should be studied as an important topic.

In 1967, under the leadership of the relevant ministries and commissions of the state, a large number of scientific researchers with the Military Medical Research Institute as the main force organized research on antimalarial drugs nationwide. At the end of the 1970s, Deng Rongxian, Teng Qihe, Li Fulin, Jiao Xiuqing and other researchers developed a new chemical synthetic antimalarial drug, which solved the treatment problem of drug-resistant falciparum malaria that had not been solved abroad for many years. In the 1980s, in order to delay the emergence of drug resistance, Zhou Yiqing, a researcher at the Military Medical Research Institute, combined artemether with the chemical drug benzylfluorene alcohol to develop a new drug compound artemether, which was designated by the World Health Organization as the preferred antimalarial drug, and successively won the "European Inventor Award" and "American Galen Award" which are influential in the international pharmaceutical community, becoming the first innovative drug approved to enter the international market and has independent intellectual property rights in China, which has a milestone significance in the history of malaria treatment. In the past 20 years, this oriental miracle drug, known as made in China, has been supplied to 1 billion people in more than 70 countries around the world, making a huge contribution to saving lives.

According to WHO's official World Malaria Report, the total number of malaria cases worldwide is about 229 million so far, with an annual death toll of about 409,000, of which 94% are concentrated in the African region and countries. China has long been committed to the antimalarial work in African countries, and generations of experts from the Military Medical Research Institute have not only continued to carry out research and development of new antimalarial drugs in the rear, but also formed a comprehensive three-dimensional medical assistance system such as medical teams, hospitals, malaria prevention and control centers, and medical personnel training in Africa, which has greatly reduced the incidence and mortality of malaria in Africa. (Reporter Zhang Zhenwei, Suzhou, Song Wu, Zhang Zonghang, Wang Xinru)

Source: CCTV News Client